What are the best online learning resources?

Question

19

Options
Considered

91

User
Recs.

Sep 9, 2018

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 19 OptionsWhy?

Best online learning resources?	Price	Features	Languages
91 Coursera	-	Video tutorials, tests, forum	Spanish, Chinese, Korean
-- edX	-	Forum, video tutorials, written tutorials, projects	Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, English, Russian, French
73 Udemy	-	Progress saver / video tutorials	Progress saver / video tutorials
-- Lynda	-	Video tutorials, progress saver, tutorials	Java, JavaScript, C++, PHP, Ruby, HTML, CSS,MySQL, Go
-- YouTube	-	–	–

See Full List

18 Other Options Considered

edX

Top Pro

Online classes from the world’s best universities

Online courses from MITx, HarvardX, BerkeleyX, UTx and many other universities can be taken there. See More

Top Con

Courses aren't always available

While edX does offer some self-paced courses, you may end up waiting for the course of your choice to be run. See More

Meharpreet Singh Sodhi's Experience

Simple, Non profit, Open and User Friendly See More

Specs

Features:Forum, video tutorials, written tutorials, projects

Languages:Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, English, Russian, French

Top Pro

Free

Both edX and the classes are free. See More

Top Con

The forums are difficult to navigate

Top Pro

A lot of topics (subjects)

Topics include biology, business, chemistry, computer science, economics, finance, electronics, engineering, food and nutrition, history, humanities, law, literature, math, medicine, music, philosophy, physics, science, statistics and more. See More

Top Con

Lack of engagement in the forums

edX does not have the same forum participation from both students and instructors that other websites do, and the form of engagement often does not encourage discussion. See More

Top Pro

Large selection of science courses

edX offers a wide variety of science-related courses. This makes it a great resource for learning not only specific programming languages, but also other topics relating to computer science. See More

Top Pro

A lot of courses are avaliable in Spanish

Translation of courses are excellent, also important Spanish institutions (like BID) offer courses in the platform. See More

Top Pro

Offer certificates for some courses

See All

Udemy

Top Con

Quality varies

The quality control for the content offered is fairly limited. As there are so many different instructors offering courses on Udemy, many of which lack formal training and teaching experience since anyone can be a teacher on Udemy, the quality varies quite a bit between the different courses. See More

Top Pro

Quality and quantity

ElatedJuventas's Experience

Terrific courses with terrific tutors! See More

Specs

Features:Progress saver / video tutorials

Top Con

Some courses are expensive for what they do offer

Top Pro

Previews

Most courses can be previewed, which allows you to see if you'd like the pace and the presenter. See More

Top Con

Most courses are expensive

While Udemy does offer free courses, most of them are around $100. See More

Top Pro

Offers intermediate and advanced courses

Udemy offers plenty of courses for beginner programmers, but also has a large variety of more advanced courses to choose from. See More

Top Pro

Friendly community

Both on site and on various social networks Udemy aims to create a community of friendly people that can help each other out. See More

Top Pro

Wide range of courses

If one course doesn't meet your needs, there is a sea of other courses to choose from. See More

Top Pro

Customer service

Top Pro

Some courses are free

Top Pro

Courses available in over 80 languages

See All

Lynda

Top Pro

Quality and quantity

Top Con

Lacks a community

With no user forum, there is very little opportunity to engage with other students and discuss the learning material. See More

Specs

Features:Video tutorials, progress saver, tutorials

Languages:Java, JavaScript, C++, PHP, Ruby, HTML, CSS,MySQL, Go

Top Pro

Video tutorials with commentaries

Top Con

iOS and Android apps are somewhat poor

Compared to the experience available on the web, the mobile apps are severely lagging behind. See More

Top Pro

Extensive

There are a lot of different languages to choose from thanks to their large offering of courses (almost 4000 total that cover various subjects). See More

Top Con

More ways to help retain the information would be helpful

More quizzes, tests and assignments to help practice and retain the presented information would be helpful. See More

Top Pro

Build as you learn

Many courses offered on Lynda take a hands-on approach, encouraging you to apply what you learn by building projects. See More

Top Pro

It's possible to get transcripts of videos

Top Pro

Videos can be watched at 2x speed

If you feel yourself getting bored with the lecture, it's possible to speed it up to get through it quicker. See More

See All

YouTube

Top Pro

Great selection of things you can see/learn/explore

Yagami Lighto's Experience

FREE! Most important here. See More

Top Pro

How-to videos

Top Pro

Video lectures

See All

PluralSight

Features:Video tutorials, written tutorials, progress saver, projects

Languages:JavaScript, .NET, C#, Java, SQL, HTML, C++, Ruby

Khan Academy

Top Pro

Free

Khan Academy is 100% free and does not require you to sign up in order to access the courses. See More

Top Con

Limited programming courses

The programming courses are not in-depth, giving students only a basic knowledge of programming. The language choices are also limited (HTML, CSS and JavaScript). See More

Ben Raz's Experience

not much courses See More

Specs

Features:Editor, progress saver, video tutorials, written tutorials

Languages:HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Top Pro

Q & A Section

There is a Q & A section after every video where you can ask questions there and let other users answer them. See More

Top Pro

Motivation through gamification

Users collect badges and points through completing missions, watching videos, adding comments and more. See More

See All

Treehouse

Top Con

Not an in-depth resource

Most Treehouse courses are geared towards beginners, making it necessary to use other resources in order to gain a deeper understanding of the language you're learning. See More

Top Pro

Build projects as you learn

Most TreeHouse courses allow you to build interesting real-world projects that make for a fun way to learn how to apply what you've learned (such as apps, websites, UI elements and more). See More

Specs

Features:Projects, quizes, video tutorials, editor, progress saver, forum

Languages:HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, PHP, Objective-C, Java, Swift

Top Con

The quality is inconsistent among courses

Treehouse has multiple teachers in order to provide such a variety of content. However there is a lack of consistency with teaching styles - Some courses provide content that is well explained and goes at a reasonable pace. Other courses can be quite hard to follow. The challenges are also inconsistent - Some are too easy and don't reinforce much of the material learned. See More

Top Pro

Learning tracks

Trying to figure out what language or tool to learn can be frustrating. TreeHouse groups their courses into learning tracks so you have more guidance, based on what type of development you want to do. Some of the tracks they offer: Web Design, Front-end Development, Full-Stack Javascript and PHP Development (see the list here). See More

Top Con

The forum lacks conversation/engagement

TreeHouse provides a a forum for students to have discussions. However almost all posts are students looking for answers to the quizzes and challenges. Any attempts at general discussions about business, learning, programming, job seeking etc. tend to go without replies. See More

Top Pro

New courses added often

Treehouse offers a wide variety of courses (well over 100) relating to programming and design. They add new content every week. See More

Top Con

The forum lacks conversation/engagement

TreeHouse provides a a forum for students to have discussions. However almost all posts are students looking for answers to the quizzes and challenges. Any attempts at general discussions about business, learning, programming, job seeking etc. tend to go without replies. See More

Top Pro

iOS and Android app

Treeehouse provides an app for both iOS and Android that is easy to use. See More

Top Con

Credit card required to sign up for the free trial

Treehouse offers a free 14-day trial, but requires a credit card to sign up. See More

See All

W3Schools

Top Con

Written tutorials only

While many learning resources offer a mixture of media in their courses (such as videos, challenges etc.), w3schools offers only written tutorials and code editors. This makes w3schools more beneficial as a quick reference rather than a primary learning resource. See More

Top Pro

Well organized tutorials

All of the lessons are separated into their own pages, which makes it easy to learn about specific concepts. See More

Specs

Features:Editor / written tutorials

Languages:HTML / CSS / JavaScript / PHP / SQL

Top Con

Outdated practices / problem solutions

The practices that are shown to solve the problems at hand are rarely, if at all, updated. Usually, their tutorials and learning material is updated only after they see their profits drop. See More

Top Pro

Built in editor

Almost every example has a "try it yourself" button which opens up an editor in a new tab. It allows you to play with the example code and see how it works. See More

Top Con

It is for profit

What defines what goes is and what gets fixed on w3schools is what gives them profit and what doesn't (through their ads system). See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

All the tutorials are written in a straightforward and easy to understand way. See More

Top Con

Certifications not recognized

Many professionals in IT agree that w3s certifications are not recognized by them and are deemed useless. Good luck finding any respectable professional that accepts a w3s certification. See More

Top Con

Doesn't care about teaching right

There are multiple errors in the data they show. Although the solutions they show work, they will lead to unmaintainable code. That happens even when the maintainable code alternatives are as easy or accessible to new programmers as the alternatives. See More

See All

MIT OpenCourseWare

Add Video or Image

Eduonix Learning Solutions

Top Pro

Vast library of video tutorials

Eduonix Learning Solutions has a vast library of video tutorials on many different segments. The company teams up with industry professionals to design step-by-step video tutorials on various topics including web development, software development, mobile development, marketing, graphic designing, office productivity, system programming and so much more. See More

Open Culture

Top Con

Website is a little messy

ReactDOM

Top Pro

Has weekly updates

Arzamas

Top Con

Only in Russian

Stepic

Add Video or Image

Net-Informations.com

Add Video or Image

GangBoard

Top Pro

Good online Hadoop training

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